1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hand-written character recognition apparatus and a facsimile apparatus utilizing the recognition apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to a hand-written character recognition apparatus in a facsimile apparatus in which addressing information hand-written on a transmission original is read and a calling operation is performed on the basis of the addressing information as read.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In Japanese Patent Application Laying-Open No. 1-175363 [H04N 1/32] laid-open on Jul. 11, 1989, for example, there is disclosed a facsimile apparatus in which addressing information written on a transmission original is read and an automatic dialing operation is performed on the basis of the addressing information as read. In this prior art, a hand-writing space is formed at a predetermined position of the transmission original, and an addressing telephone number is hand-written in the hand-writing space, and the hand-written addressing telephone number is read by a character recognition portion.
In such an automatically dialing facsimile apparatus, it is necessary to correctly recognize characters of the hand-written addressing information so as to prevent an erroneous transmission. To this end, it is necessary to correctly cut-out each of the hand-writren characters. However, in the above described prior art, a specific recognition method of the hand-written addressing information as well as a cut-out method of the characters are not disclosed.
On the other hand, in a case where the characters of the addressing information are hand-written on the transmission original, the characters are not always written by a user with an equal space between characters. Therefore, it is very important to correctly recognize whether or not a blank between the characters is the space between characters.
However, in any of prior arts, no method for correctly detecting the space between characters. Therefore, in most of the prior arts, as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 4-21914 [G06K 9/03] published on Apr. 14, 1993, and Japanese Patent Application Laying-Open No. 5-207256 [H04N 1/32] laid-open on Aug. 13, 1994, or Japanese Patent Application Laying-Open No. 6-105025 [H04N 1/00] laid-open on Apr. 25, 1995, discrete entry spaces for respective characters are formed in advance with constant intervals, and the characters of the addressing information hand-written in the entry spaces are cut-out. However, in the prior art in which the discrete entry spaces for the respective characters are designated in advance, it is troublesome for the user to hand-write the characters in the entry spaces, and therefore, such a kind of automatically dialing facsimile apparatus has not being put into practical use.